The Tech.pinions Podcast: Intel Chromebooks and AMD Architectures

This week Tim Bajarin, Bob O’Donnell, and Ben Bajarin chat about the introduction of both new Intel Core i3-based Chromebooks and AMD’s ambidextrous computing architecture, which offers the option of ARM or x86-based CPUs.

Bob O'Donnell

Bob O’Donnell is the president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, LLC a technology consulting and market research firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community. You can follow him on Twitter @bobodtech.

Chromebooks as Netbook 2.0 seems a fair comparison. They started showing up about a year after the first iPad. Any data on adoption/sales, customer satisfaction & average price? We know iPad went from 0 to 70+ million in the first 3 yrs. Apps & accessories matched the growth curve. Apple claims enterprise & education adoption is strong, but don’t breakdown unit sales. How’s it been for Chromebooks?

Although they will be interesting to watch in the coming years, I still believe the broader trend is mobile computing (phones & tablets). Chromebooks are just low-end “trucks” in the classic Steve Jobs analogy.

Bob O’Donnell

From what I’ve heard, Chromebooks have been a bit of a mixed bag on the customer satisfaction front. On one hand, for people who want a simple, inexpensive keyboard-based device and for schools that need the same and want to combine it with Google Docs and other Google services, they’re a great fit. But, for consumers who want a more general purpose PC, the severe lack of applications can lead to reasonable return numbers. Price point is one of they key drivers for Chromebooks, as I mentioned in the podcast, because they are the cheapest clamshell-based device you can buy. The truth is, lots of people still want keyboards and simple access to e-mail and the web and Chromebooks are a good fit for that particular need. As a result, sales numbers have been growing pretty impressively from what I’ve been hearing, especially in the US market.